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While many an area resident rolled out of bed late Saturday morning for last weekend’s Solstice Festival, a crowd of early rising sightseers—equipped with windbreakers and digital SLRs—boarded the Condor Express for a voyage to Coal Oil Point, where Venoco Inc. harvests fuel from the Santa Barbara Channel’s natural gas and oil seeps.

Offering tours for over a decade, Venoco takes passengers out to Coal Oil Point, which has the second largest concentration of natural seeps in the world. An oil seep, much like a hot spring, leaks natural gas and oil from reservoirs deep in the ground. Nearly 6,000 gallons of oil and five million cubic feet of natural gas rise from the ocean floor each day.

The two-hour boat ride takes passengers two miles out to Platform Holly, Venoco’s offshore oil platform, which pipes oil and gas to storage facilities. Along the way, Venoco Vice President Mike Edwards, and narrator of the tour, pointed out marine wildlife and commented on the passing landscape.

“Now, just for you guys, we hired this sea lion. There — he’s waving at you,” Edwards said as we passed groups of sea lions parked on buoys. The tour often sees bottlenose dolphins and birds, and sometimes sees whales.

While most passengers on board were there simply to enjoy the boat ride, for the persistently curious, Edwards is well versed in oil seep lore. Some passengers wandered through the captain’s cabin to chat and ask questions.

The boat slowed to a bob by a patch of ocean several feet wide, where, like fizzy soda, rising gas formed bubbles in the water that burst when they reach the atmosphere. The air was warm and heavy with the scent of gasoline. In other parts of the water, seepage caused a persistent oil slick that gave the water a patchy, iridescent sheen. Oil rises naturally to the surface of the water and eventually becomes tar.

ARCO currently captures fuel from these seeps using large steel tent structures placed over areas of heavy leakage. According to the UCSB Hydrocarbon Seeps Project, which conducts geological surveys and studies emissions from the seeps, the current rate of capture is equivalent to emissions from 35,000 cars.

“We all walk on the beach and get tar on our feet, and we look up and see a platform,” said Edwards, explaining why Venoco offers these tours. “The reason the platforms are there is because there’s so much oil in the area — the oil isn’t coming from us, and the general public, a lot of the time, doesn’t realize that.”

Comments

Wow John, way to not see the point. Everyone assumes the tar they pick up on their feet at Goleta or Hendry's comes from oil leaking from the platforms. In reality, that tar would be there either way because of the natural seeps.

No one is saying oil spills are good. But when oil is naturally "spilling" out of the ground, who are you going to point the finger at now?

This article reads like a Venoco/Crustal Studies puff piece. Everyone knows they are not objective - if this is news, lets see some analysis and issue discussion. Please get the facts straight and make them clear - 5 mcf/day from this seep, or all seeps in the ocean? Mr. Vo - don't think that just because other news outlets publish press releases as news its OK in the Indy. We hold you to a higher standard.

You got it Marc What they don't tell you is that they inject water under pressure to make oil extraction easier for them!

Water injection refers to the method in oil industry where water is injected back into the reservoir, usually to increase pressure and thereby stimulate production. Water injection wells can be found both on- and offshore, to increase oil recovery from an existing reservoir.

Water is injected (1) to support pressure of the reservoir (also known as voidage replacement), and (2) to sweep or displace oil from the reservoir, and push it towards a well.

Normally only 30% of the oil in a reservoir can be extracted, but water injection increases that percentage (known as the recovery factor) and maintains the production rate of a reservoir over a longer period of time.

Certainly, this article could have been more deeply researched to get hard data on ocean seeps, and how this particular seep measures up. But the fact is that when ARCO built this project, it was one of the real good guys who help deal with a pollution problem right off of IV. The air quality improved immediately. Ask Bill Wallace if you want someone else's opinion.

ARCO made out fine on this project, (but not coal oil point). This article wasn't written in the context of some political debate, as was done a few years ago by some who maintained more drilling would reduce seep pollution. It's a nice article on a neat project just off of our coast that more people should probably know about.

I liked it. I just didn't understand why in the last paragraph, the article mentions ARCO instead of Venoco? Some editing gone wrong perhaps.

with the current spill, the old spills, the commercials; the greedy oil companies are not to be trusted. Even a little puff piece brings out the politics because their industry is practicing socialism in this country when we are denied the same (are you subsidized?). People who are old enough to remember tell me how they used to go to the beach before the oil spill here. Problem is, most never went back. We are cynics for good reasons. "real good guys", in the oil business? Riiiiggghhhtt. Most wealthy companies in history, still haven't updated their clean up techniques since 1969, shamefull, greedy, criminal.

The comment that oil and gas are natural here is misleading. What Venoco did not tell you is that the barging operation releases crude vapors that contain cancer causing agents such as benzene. There has been 2 cases of cancer in the neighborhood next to the coal oil point. Both happened on children, who are more vulnerable to this type of exposure. These are very rare cancers and unlikely to have occurred in the same area by chance. They also did not tell you that odor complaints are 4 times more frequent when the barge is loading than when the barge is not present. The natural gas seeps also produce vapors but they are far enough that the gas is blown offshore. However, the gas from the barge loading operation is right next to the beach and is blown onshore. In fact, the prevailing wind brings the vapors from the barge straight to the point and IV elementary school. The crude vapors that smell like acid butane are only present when the barge is here. These are the worse gases you could inhale. Venoco, APCD, and the State Lands Commission are also not telling you that they have ignored warnings about this public health. For over 15 years they have ignored complaints and asserted that the independent studies were biased, but they have not conducted or published their own studies. APCD now accepts that the barge is releasing dangerous odors and fines Venoco for doing so. But the barge continues to operate and have frequent releases of vapors. How is this action by APCD protecting public health?People living at the point,, IV, and even UCSB have had to evacuate from vapor releases from the barge. Last year, alarms at UCSB detected the odors and went off, causing shut downs of several departments. These vapors are silent killers. You may be thinking you live in a clean environment and having a health activity by taking a walk on the beach and in fact, you might be inhaling vapors that cause cancer, asthma, and a number of other health issues. I am yet to see a statement by our local government that the barge activity they are permitting (and are being supported financially by) is safe. As always, these things only get solved with law suits, after enough innocent people get hurt..